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Do you need help? Watch the Video Lesson for this Practice Problem.

There are different ways of representing numerical data in graphical form. One of these ways is a dot plot. A Dot plot, or dot chart, is one of the simplest ways of representing numerical data in graphical form, especially if the data is composed of small quantities. And as the name suggests, the graph is composed of dots or filled circles.

To graph numerical data using a dot plot, you need to first draw a horizontal line and a vertical line to form the first quadrant of the Cartesian plane. Then arrange the labels or categories of the given data on the horizontal line as if they were arranged like a number line. Next, use the vertical line to create a number line and mark the number line with the frequency number of each category. The vertical line is not necessary on the graph but it is advisable to have in order for the graph to be more consistent. Lastly, plot the dots in front of each category vertically until it reaches the highest number of frequency. Dots on each category must be aligned together, however, some only draw the dot on the highest number. Either way, the graph is correct. For a concrete and visual example on how to represent numerical data using dot plot, you can watch this video.

Dot plots were first developed in the field of genetics. Dot plots helped scientists to investigate properties of protein coding sequences in order to predict secondary structures like stem-loop formation or structural RNA domains. Dot plots have also been applied in software development to identify redundant code and to ease maintenance or design patterns among releases.